Starting today August 7th, 2024, in order to post in the Married Couples, Courting Couples, or Singles forums, you will not be allowed to post if you have your Marital status designated as private. Announcements will be made in the respective forums as well but please note that if yours is currently listed as Private, you will need to submit a ticket in the Support Area to have yours changed.
To be sung to the melody of the chorus of "The Man Who Broke the Bank at Monte Carlo"I think the topic title is mispelled. It should be called Astrology News.
All of the satellite telemetric data can be easily coming from a super computer. The $cientists that read the telemetric data think it's coming from a satellite.
To be sung to the melody of the chorus of "The Man Who Broke the Bank at Monte Carlo"
As I troll along this fine forum,
With an independent air,
I can hear the plebs declare,
He isn't playing fair.
You can hear them groan and start to moan,
You can see them cavil at the tone
Of the man who trolls the threads at Christian Forum.
Yes. I also got your pm. Apologies for not replying.heh heh. Hey, did you see my quick attempt to estimate the order of magnitude of a possible distance of our solar system from it's origination cluster (as if the cluster were not dispersed) -- post #51 above? Basically, I think we got little chance of finding members of that cluster (among something on the order of 1 billion stars) though I still think it's fun to give it a try anyway.
Yes. I also got your pm. Apologies for not replying.
I think your conclusions are correct for the present, but who knows what may be possible with the technology of the next decade, century and millenium.
Pretty unlikely - the scientists that analyse the satellite data are the people who built the satellite and launched it. They're generally the only people who know exactly what that data should look like.All of the satellite telemetric data can be easily coming from a super computer. The $cientists that read the telemetric data think it's coming from a satellite.
Researchers have spotted the fastest-growing black hole ever found — and have seen the (thankfully) distant devourer consume a mass equivalent to Earth's sun every two days.
Researchers used newly released data from the European Space Agency's Gaia satellite to confirm that the brightly shining object is a black hole, which appears to have been the mass of about 20 billion suns when the light was released and was growing by 1 percent every million years, researchers said in a statement released today (May 15).
"This black hole is growing so rapidly that it's shining thousands of times more brightly than an entire galaxy, due to all the gases it sucks in daily that cause lots of friction and heat," Christian Wolf, an astronomer at the Australian National University and first author on the new research, said in the statement.
"If we had this monster sitting at the center of our Milky Way galaxy, it would appear 10 times brighter than a full moon. It would appear as an incredibly bright, pinpoint star that would almost wash out all of the stars in the sky," he added.
Luckily, though, the black hole is far enough away that it likely released its light more than 12 billion years ago, the researchers said. The energy it emits is mostly ultraviolet light, but it also releases X-rays. "Again, if this monster was at the center of the Milky Way, it would likely make life on Earth impossible with the huge amounts of X-rays emanating from it," Wolf said.
Because of its distance and the expansion of space, that light had shifted into the near-infrared during its billions-of-years journey. Wolf and his colleagues spotted the light with the SkyMapper telescope at the ANU Siding Spring Observatory. They then used the Gaia satellite to measure that the object was sitting still, thereby also confirming that it was incredibly distant and likely a supermassive black hole, the researchers said. Then, another ANU telescope measured the wavelengths released from the object to verify its composition.
"We don't know how this one grew so large, so quickly in the early days of the universe," Wolf said. "The hunt is on to find even faster-growing black holes."
Wolf added that distant black holes like this one can help scientists study the early universe. Researchers can spot the shadows of other objects in front of the black holes, and their radiation also helps clear away obscuring gas.
With giant new ground-based telescopes currently under construction, scientists will also be able to use bright, distant objects like this voracious black hole to measure the universe's expansion, the researchers said.
The new work was accepted to the journal Publications of the Astronomical Society of Australia.
Full Story Here: Scientists Just Found the Fastest-Growing Black Hole. Here's How Fast It 'Eats'
Dude! Emitting spectral line from ionized iron!
:=)
You know what that suggests! Could be some big-ass star near the end of its life sucked in before it went nova, and already had plenty of iron inside! Fun. Would love to safely see that happening.
What I would have found astounding would have been if NASA had been able to demonstrate that there was practically no organic matter on Mars. That would have required a major reworking of our hypotheses on the formation of planetary systems. The expectation of organic molecules on Mars is based upon the following:Chemical compounds necessary for life ("Organic Materials") found on Mars in 3.5 billion year old rocks (But not Life)
Big news from Mars today: NASA's Curiosity rover found ancient traces of organic matter embedded in Martian rocks and detected a "seasonal variation" in atmospheric methane on the Red Planet — an annual pulse of the gas, almost as if something out there were breathing.
These are exciting findings, published as twin papers in the journal Science today (June 7). But they aren't proof of life on Mars, or even necessarily strong evidence that there's anything living, or anything that used to be alive, out there. The organic compounds aren't even the first molecules of their kind found on Mars, though they are the oldest.
"We can explain both of these things with geological processes," said Inge Loes ten Kate, an astrobiologist at Utrecht University in the Netherlands who wrote a commentary for Science accompanying the two papers. [7 Most Mars-like Places on Earth ]
Finding organic compounds — which are substances that contain carbon and are considered necessary components of life — in 3.5-billion-year-old rocks on Mars is a big deal, ten Kate told Live Science, and so is the discovery of the seasonal methane (CH4) variation in the atmosphere.
Living things produce a lot of organic molecules. And life as we know it requires organic molecules to exist. So the Martian traces of organic matter do hint that the basic conditions for life to form were present on Mars at around the same time they existed on Earth. (Curiosity has already shown that water flowed in Gale Crater, the same place the rover found these organic compounds, billions of years ago.)
And the seasonal methane pulse is perhaps, maybe, possibly — but far, far from certainly — the sort of signal Curiosity might detect if life did form back then and was still around somewhere, ten Kate said. On Earth, living things (especially bacteria) produce lots of methane, though the gas also has plenty of non-living sources.
But scientists found ancient organic matter! On Mars! Why isn't that a bigger deal?
One big reason, ten Kate said, is that it's not actually that surprising. "Organic matter" in this context doesn't mean anything we'd recognize from our lives on Earth. These aren't tufts of grass, or bits of flesh, or dead cells. "Organic matter" includes a whole host of compounds with carbon atoms in them. They're considered necessary for life to form, but there are plenty of places with lots of organic compounds but no life. In this case, Curiosity found molecules with names like "thiophene" (C4H4S) and "dimethylsulfide" (C2H6S) that aren't all that rare in the solar system.
There's enough ambient carbon and hydrogen in the solar system that they react to form basic organic compounds pretty frequently, even without biology involved, ten Kate said.
"Even nowadays on Earth, we see a large influx of extraterrestrial [organic] material in the form of interplanetary dust and meteorites," ten Kate said.
That stuff is thought to be spread throughout the solar system, she said. And scientists already expected that, in the early, more turbulent days of the solar system, organic compounds would rain down on Mars. (We can find organic material on the Jupiter's moon for the same reason, and Curiosity first spotted organic compounds on Mars back in 2014, though in less-ancient rocks.)
These newly-found ancient organics, ten Kate said, serve to confirm that the basic conditions for life to form really did exist on Mars 3.5 billion years ago, and that there wasn't any outside force (say, ultraviolet light) powerful enough to destroy them entirely.
The authors of the two studies in Science agree with her, writing that there's no way to tell what produced the molecules And certain features of the molecules show they aren't the direct, unchanged remnants of anything living.
"[Curiosity's] molecular observations do not clearly reveal the source of the organic matter in [Gale Crater]. Biological, geological and meteoritic sources are all possible," they wrote.
Part of the problem, the researchers wrote, is that the molecules have changed a great deal in the eons since they originally formed. Whatever chemical structure they once had might have offered clues as to their origin, but it's long since been lost.
For those reasons, ten Kate said, the methane variation is the more exciting finding. Certainly, there are geological processes that could make methane levels change over the Martian year, she said. A likely candidate: "serpentinization," where water and minerals react, releasing methane. It's possible, ten Kate said, that this could happen on Mars. And the reaction might speed up and slow down over the course of the year as the planet warms and cools, producing the pulse without any living source.
To figure out the source of the methane flux, ten Kate said, scientists need to determine how widespread it is on Mars. (So far, it's been detected only in Gale Crater, where Curiosity hangs out.) They also need to figure out how old it is and its specific chemistry; Curiosity's sensors didn't reveal whether the methane molecules are ancient or new, or whether they include similar isotopes of carbon to methane released by life on Earth.
The answers to those questions will require more equipment and more measurement hours, ten Kate said. But these findings do, at the very least, point the way forward in the Martian hunt for life.
Source Here: There May Be Life on Mars, But This NASA Report Doesn't Prove It
Further Information: Nasa Mars rover finds organic matter in ancient lake bed
That's because if you think about it, they once believed the universe was 1% plasma. Now we know it is 99.9% plasma, but all our theories stem from the period when we believed it was 1%That's true in some key ways -> Elementary particle physics (the building blocks of all this Universe as we think of it so far) is on the most fundamental level -- the most foundational level of physics -- very much in flux with new hypotheses it seems like every month or two, sometimes more often.
We think we cannot explain (not in a currently testable way, nor even a speculation that most physicists think is credible either!) about 95% of what this Universe is!
That non-radiative (no radiation from it) unknown stuff we think may exist that we call "dark matter" and the stuff we call "dark energy" -- meaning they don't emit nor do they absorb (we think) any light or EM radiation of any kind so far as we can tell. And even whether they really exist or instead we just have some really basic things wrong, etc.
So many speculations!
Chemical compounds necessary for life ("Organic Materials") found on Mars in 3.5 billion year old rocks (But not Life)
Big news from Mars today: NASA's Curiosity rover found ancient traces of organic matter embedded in Martian rocks and detected a "seasonal variation" in atmospheric methane on the Red Planet — an annual pulse of the gas, almost as if something out there were breathing.
These are exciting findings, published as twin papers in the journal Science today (June 7). But they aren't proof of life on Mars, or even necessarily strong evidence that there's anything living, or anything that used to be alive, out there. The organic compounds aren't even the first molecules of their kind found on Mars, though they are the oldest.
"We can explain both of these things with geological processes," said Inge Loes ten Kate, an astrobiologist at Utrecht University in the Netherlands who wrote a commentary for Science accompanying the two papers. [7 Most Mars-like Places on Earth ]
Finding organic compounds — which are substances that contain carbon and are considered necessary components of life — in 3.5-billion-year-old rocks on Mars is a big deal, ten Kate told Live Science, and so is the discovery of the seasonal methane (CH4) variation in the atmosphere.
Living things produce a lot of organic molecules. And life as we know it requires organic molecules to exist. So the Martian traces of organic matter do hint that the basic conditions for life to form were present on Mars at around the same time they existed on Earth. (Curiosity has already shown that water flowed in Gale Crater, the same place the rover found these organic compounds, billions of years ago.)
And the seasonal methane pulse is perhaps, maybe, possibly — but far, far from certainly — the sort of signal Curiosity might detect if life did form back then and was still around somewhere, ten Kate said. On Earth, living things (especially bacteria) produce lots of methane, though the gas also has plenty of non-living sources.
But scientists found ancient organic matter! On Mars! Why isn't that a bigger deal?
One big reason, ten Kate said, is that it's not actually that surprising. "Organic matter" in this context doesn't mean anything we'd recognize from our lives on Earth. These aren't tufts of grass, or bits of flesh, or dead cells. "Organic matter" includes a whole host of compounds with carbon atoms in them. They're considered necessary for life to form, but there are plenty of places with lots of organic compounds but no life. In this case, Curiosity found molecules with names like "thiophene" (C4H4S) and "dimethylsulfide" (C2H6S) that aren't all that rare in the solar system.
There's enough ambient carbon and hydrogen in the solar system that they react to form basic organic compounds pretty frequently, even without biology involved, ten Kate said.
"Even nowadays on Earth, we see a large influx of extraterrestrial [organic] material in the form of interplanetary dust and meteorites," ten Kate said.
That stuff is thought to be spread throughout the solar system, she said. And scientists already expected that, in the early, more turbulent days of the solar system, organic compounds would rain down on Mars. (We can find organic material on the Jupiter's moon for the same reason, and Curiosity first spotted organic compounds on Mars back in 2014, though in less-ancient rocks.)
These newly-found ancient organics, ten Kate said, serve to confirm that the basic conditions for life to form really did exist on Mars 3.5 billion years ago, and that there wasn't any outside force (say, ultraviolet light) powerful enough to destroy them entirely.
The authors of the two studies in Science agree with her, writing that there's no way to tell what produced the molecules And certain features of the molecules show they aren't the direct, unchanged remnants of anything living.
"[Curiosity's] molecular observations do not clearly reveal the source of the organic matter in [Gale Crater]. Biological, geological and meteoritic sources are all possible," they wrote.
Part of the problem, the researchers wrote, is that the molecules have changed a great deal in the eons since they originally formed. Whatever chemical structure they once had might have offered clues as to their origin, but it's long since been lost.
For those reasons, ten Kate said, the methane variation is the more exciting finding. Certainly, there are geological processes that could make methane levels change over the Martian year, she said. A likely candidate: "serpentinization," where water and minerals react, releasing methane. It's possible, ten Kate said, that this could happen on Mars. And the reaction might speed up and slow down over the course of the year as the planet warms and cools, producing the pulse without any living source.
To figure out the source of the methane flux, ten Kate said, scientists need to determine how widespread it is on Mars. (So far, it's been detected only in Gale Crater, where Curiosity hangs out.) They also need to figure out how old it is and its specific chemistry; Curiosity's sensors didn't reveal whether the methane molecules are ancient or new, or whether they include similar isotopes of carbon to methane released by life on Earth.
The answers to those questions will require more equipment and more measurement hours, ten Kate said. But these findings do, at the very least, point the way forward in the Martian hunt for life.
Source Here: There May Be Life on Mars, But This NASA Report Doesn't Prove It
Further Information: Nasa Mars rover finds organic matter in ancient lake bed
We use cookies and similar technologies for the following purposes:
Do you accept cookies and these technologies?
We use cookies and similar technologies for the following purposes:
Do you accept cookies and these technologies?